


barbecue for two

by OldEmeraldEye



Series: Dice Fic Challenge [15]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: A Glimpse At Actual Wizarding Logic, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Body Horror, Character Death, Ghosts Are A Known Quantity, Philosopher's Stone, The Golden Trio
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-19 01:41:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29867235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OldEmeraldEye/pseuds/OldEmeraldEye
Summary: Quirrell demonstrates the potentially dire effect of two things most wizards lack: basic logic, and systematic caution in the face of peril.
Relationships: Quirinus Quirrell & Voldemort
Series: Dice Fic Challenge [15]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1871956
Kudos: 1





	barbecue for two

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt trapdoor

The stretch of chambers that run through the third floor corridor remains remarkably silent, once Quirrell deals with the troll. He can hear the rasp of his breathing - even with it's magically resistant skin, it had proved no challenge before his wand, but almost a full calendar year of cohabitation with his lord's magically preserved remnant had taken its toll on his body - and the slightest scuff of his boots against the flagstones that his silencing charm fails to mask.

He pauses, waiting till his lungs burn with the strain before moving on. Not against the stench - he had applied the bubblehead charm as a matter of course before entering the third floor - but the better to hear any sign of pursuit.

He _is_ expecting company - Dumbledore is not the sort to leave a treasure such as the Philosophers Stone absent of tripwires and surveillance, even if he'd sequestered it in a school - but he has at least an hour yet before the Headmaster makes his earliest possible return from the Ministry. His lord's anticipation curls like thick smoke around his nerves. Soon. They have been waiting a year now, but soon, soon, their patience will find its reward.

Still, every soft brush of robes against stone sends nervous shivers of anticipation running through his veins. Quirinus is no match for the famed vanquisher of Grindlewald, and he knows it. But his master's power must be conserved until they reach the elixir. Quirrell continues on, alone.

Potter might appear - but the boy has shown no sign of any great talent in the year Quirrell has spent watching him, save for his brief forays on the Quidditch pitch. He has nothing to fear from a boy of _his_ age. And even if he might, there is nowhere for him to fly here. Any heroics would prove futile against his strength, let alone the Dark Lord's.

* * *

In the last assumption, Quirrell is both right and wrong - the enchanted chessboard stops them all - Potter, Granger and the juniormost Weasley, (non-fatally, since this is a _school_ , Minerva had made herself quite clear on what _exactly_ she'd though of not assuming students would find their way into the gauntlet, but they are most certainly incapacitated - she had made it to be a trap, after all) and Quirrelmort is stuck alone in penultimate room with the mirror. After his first dozen attempts at retrieval fail, he tries to leave before Dumbledore returns - the stone will be most vulnerable in transit, after all. Dumbledore could not risk the lack of witnesses of empty summer. And if he does ... well. They have the measure of the protections now, the final trick cannot hope to frustrate them forever.

It is then that he discovers the last, final, greatest trap laid upon the corridor.

The room is warded, an inward looking, interlocking construct, effectively invisible from the outside and worse - the walls are made of magic dampening material. Nothing lethal, not to a mere wizard. Weakened spells are an annoyance, at best. But it absorbs emitted magic, and that is all that keeps their coexistence possible. He _cannot_ remain here.

Black flames burn merrily across the doorway. His freezing charm has no effect. Not as it had from the rooms entrance. He hadn't dreamed of touching the array of bottles neatly presented on the table. Severus Snape was exactly the sort of conniving snake to fill each and every one with poison to spite the attempt at entry, risk of curious students or no. And he had made his displeasure with the entire prospect of the third floor corridor quite clear. A useful attribute, in its place, but not when the specifics of his loyalty was in question.

The ward array traps the Dark Lord's wraith in his flesh as surely as the ritually shed blood had allowed it to enter. He is as trapped in Quirrel as Quirrel is trapped in the final chamber of this subpar gauntlet. Technically, he could leave, but that is only a technicality. That way lies the utter vulnerability and blindness of a wraith, and no more freedom.

Voldemort, overburdened with the unendurable cost of a years long patience, takes control of their shared body and turns him back to the taunting images, probes of sickly magic threaded and forced through Quirrell's weakened channels even as his desiccated corpse slowly starts to fall apart around him. He must have the stone. Not only to return him to a proper semblance of life, but it's power will allow him flight. He _must_ seize it.

He must.

* * *

It is long hours into the morning before Dumbledore returns to Scotland from the Ministry's halls. He arrives into a school that is quiet save for departing patrols and a lone toad being shepherded by one of the quieter ghosts through the entrance hall.

He'd chosen apparition and a slow, unwinding walk up from the gates as a method of travel over the floo in part because he fears, in his absence an attempt on the Stone's defenses was nigh inevitable - and, being out of place to intervene, foiling a break for the ward line was the next best strategy - and partly because a walk in the brisk cold is exactly the sort of thing to get the taint of the place out.

The quietly peeping instruments on his desk shows the breach - but there is only one being in the gauntlet's final chamber. One being, and a not inconsiderable amount of dark magic. But the protections hold firm, and he is weary from the heady mix of politicking and bureaucracy that make up existence within Ministry's hallowed halls.

He sees no sense risking hasty action. Not when he can recuperate and allow his opponent to weaken in the meanwhile.

It is not until an hour after Neville's petrified body is discovered in the Gryffindor commonroom by Percy Weasley at quarter past seven that a search for the missing students begins. Later still, late in the afternoon before teachers gather to open the corridor. Albus, well pleased with the much weakened signature he reads before a rather delayed breakfast, had not stopped to consider the trap may have caught more than Riddle in its grasp. An oversight, and one that is sure to provide many a headache to come, if Minerva's expression is any indicator.


End file.
